66 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



the fishermen's classes, has been occupied in working out 



the microscopic quantitative results of the plankton 

 collections made by myself and others from the seas to 

 the South and West of the Isle of Man, and this work is 

 again, as in the last two years, incorporated in our joint 

 paper on " Intensive Study of the Plankton " (Part III.") 

 which will be found at the end of the Report. 



Mr. Scott Has further devoted some time to the 

 examination of the shell-fish beds of his neighbourhood, 

 and I have re-printed a short report on the Flookburgh 

 cockle-beds which he drew up for our last Quarterly 

 Report to the Scientific Sub-Committee. 



Mr. Johnstone has carried on his work partly at Piel, 

 partly at sea, and partly in the Liverpool laboratory, and 

 his results will be seen in several of the articles in this 

 Report. He has continued his work on the internal 

 parasites of some of our local fishes — such as the Skate — 

 and this forms the subject of one of the papers below. 



Measurements of Plaice. 



One of the most extensive articles in this Report is 

 an account by Mr. Johnstone of the measurements of 

 many thousands of Irish Sea plaice which have been made 

 by our staff at sea during the last couple of years. The 

 object of this investigation is to get information with 

 respect to the sizes of the plaice inhabiting the various 

 fishing grounds in the district. The results of the 

 trawling experiments and the statistics recorded in the 

 past are not sufficiently exact and definite, so far as the 

 size of the fish caught is concerned, to be of much value. 

 This gap in our knowledge is now being rilled up, and 

 the statistics obtained during the last two years include 

 individual measurements of nearly 100,000 plaice. 



In the summary of this work which Mr. Johnstone 



